A generic apparatus for affixing flat, self-adhesive supplementary products, in particular labels, samples of goods, MemoStick® or Post-It® products, is disclosed by EP-A 1 112 861 or EP-A 1 275 607. The apparatus according to EP-A 1 112 861 comprises a number of holding elements comprising an L-shaped base body and a top part fixed thereto such that it can rotate. The top part has a suction element, with which supplementary products can be gripped individually at a pick-up point. In the region of a discharge point, the supplementary products are pressed onto printed products conveyed past there. Previously, they have been located into a position running parallel to the printed product. The printed product is supported by an adjacent holding element during the pressing-on action. For this purpose, the holding elements are configured such that they can move relative to one another. The apparatus according to EP-A 1 275 607 additionally offers the possibility of affixing the supplementary product optionally to the leading or trailing side of the printed product in the conveying direction by means of suction elements present on both sides of the top part. Neither of the apparatuses is capable of placing a supplementary product around one edge of the printed product, for example in order to reinforce or to seal this edge.
EP-A 0 666 186 discloses closing a folded, multi-part printed product at its open edges with a supplementary product in the form of a section of adhesive tape, in order to prevent inserted product parts falling out or being displaced. The elongated sections of adhesive tape are picked up in an initially flat form by transfer tongs arranged on a wheel, are then bent by closing the tongs and are pressed onto mutually opposite sides of the printed product. The transfer tongs in each case have at the ends of their jaws a suction element which in each case keeps one end of the section of adhesive tape active. The opened transfer tongs take up a relatively large amount of space, which determines the minimum spatial distance between two pairs of tongs and thus also the processing cycle. Furthermore, the spacing of the suction elements and thus the optimum size of the section of adhesive tape cannot be varied.